Apple TV quietly dropped the plus sign from its name last year and built an enviable prestige reputation through CODA and Killers of the Flower Moon, yet it spent years struggling to turn its film slate into things people actually watched at home. That started shifting when Apple leaned into straightforward star-driven genre fare, with The Family Plan and The Gorge becoming some of its most-streamed originals and F1 proving the company could mount a legitimate theatrical blockbuster.
Matchbox Is Now the No. 1 Movie on Apple TV Worldwide
The lesson Apple seems to have absorbed is that familiar hooks plus big stars travel further than awards bait. According to FlixPatrol, Matchbox, the toy-brand adaptation starring John Cena, is the number one movie on Apple TV worldwide, comfortably ahead of Mayday, the K2 climbing documentary, and even F1 itself.
FlixPatrol has Matchbox at 1,030 points, well clear of Mayday at 743, and that second-place film is no slouch given it pairs Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh in a disaster thriller. Beating F1 on Apple’s own service is perhaps the more symbolic win, since the Brad Pitt racing drama was the company’s biggest theatrical success ever and has remained a streaming staple since arriving on the platform.
Apple’s Biggest Streaming Movie Hit May Be Its Simplest Bet Yet
Matchbox is based on the Mattel die-cast car line, following Barbie as the second film out of Mattel’s ambitious cinematic pipeline, and it’s fair to say nobody was expecting the tiny-toy-cars movie to arrive before announced projects like the Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Ocean’s prequel pairing or the long-gestating Hot Wheels film at Warner Bros. Yet here it is, a 126-minute action-adventure directed by Sam Hargrave, the former stunt coordinator behind Netflix’s Extraction films, which arguably explains a lot about the finished product’s priorities. Cena stars alongside Jessica Biel in a story about childhood friends pulled back together by a globe-spanning mission involving, naturally, some very fast cars.
Hargrave directing Cena in a vehicular action romp is exactly the kind of mid-budget crowd-pleaser that studios stopped making for theaters, and Apple keeps demonstrating there’s a sizable global audience ready to watch them at home. For Mattel, a worldwide chart-topper vindicates the strategy of treating its toy catalog as a film universe beyond Barbie, and it likely strengthens the case for everything else in the company’s pipeline. Whether Matchbox has the legs of Apple’s sturdier performers remains to be seen, but a global number one that outruns your own biggest blockbuster is a serious problem to have.
Release Date
October 9, 2026
Runtime
127 minutes
Writers
David Coggeshall